Rising numbers of New York’s Orthodox-Jewish teens are getting hooked on dope and booze – forcing the tightknit community to face a problem many would rather keep hidden.

Parents and rabbis are exposing the secret shame, trying to help families torn apart by addiction but too sheltered or embarrassed to know where to turn.

“There are segments of the community that literally do not believe it [drug use and addiction] is happening,” said psychologist and drug-abuse expert Benzion Twerski. “But I am opening wounds that I know need to be opened.”

There are no statistics on drug use among the 206,000 Orthodox Jews in New York City, Long Island and Westchester. But experts, such as Twerski say more and more religious Jewish kids are smoking pot, snorting coke and popping pills.

“The dealers are coming to them,” said Maxine Yuttal, executive director of Jewish Alcoholics, Chemically Dependent Persons and Significant Others, which held its first retreat for teens last year.

Some teens think adults are overreacting – especially since Orthodox kids use fewer drugs than the average American teen.

“You smoke a little pot, you’re labeled. That’s it … You’re an outcast,” said an 18-year-old boy hanging out with friends late Friday night – the Jewish sabbath – on a park bench on Ocean Parkway in Brooklyn.

The teen said he “occasionally” smokes marijuana.

The boys, smoking forbidden cigarettes on the Sabbath, said that drug use among the Orthodox is nothing new – and that their own rebellion is minor.

But experts said kids are getting hooked and delaying treatment because adults don’t know what to do.

“This is a problem the Jewish community has never had to deal with before, and they’re shaking in their boots,” said Rabbi Joel Dinnerstein, director of Brooklyn’s Ohr Ki Tov Growth and Transformation Center, which combines a 12-step recovery program with Torah study.

The growing threat has led to an unprecedented openness:

*At a meeting last month, some community leaders asked Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes to prod cops to arrest Orthodox kids caught with drugs instead of turning them over to their parents, so the teens would be forced to enter rehab.

*Early last year, a group of Orthodox Brooklyn parents formed Mothers Aligned Saving Kids, a grass-roots group that runs support meetings and offers referrals for Jewish families with kids in trouble.

“People just did not know what to do,” said Ruth, the group’s founder, who did not want her last name used. “We don’t sweep it under the carpet anymore.”

*This month, the 14-student Torah Academy of Lawrence-Cedarhurst in Long Island, founded for struggling boys, will graduate its first class. Not all the students use drugs, but the yeshiva offers drug counseling at TEMPO Group, a local treatment center.

*Six months ago, the nonprofit Orthodox Caucus started visiting private Jewish schools to warn against the dangers of drugs.

But there’s a long way to go.

Addiction is still a deep shame in the close-knit community, tainting family names and wrecking marriage prospects, Yuttal said.

“David,” a 44-year-old Orthodox stockbroker who asked that his name be changed, said his Crown Heights neighbors shunned him when he went into drug rehab 14 years ago.

“I don’t think there was one person from my community who called me,” said David, who works with Ohr Ki Tov.

Many modern Orthodox schools have drug education, but most yeshivas don’t, because administrators fear families will yank their kids out, Yuttal said.

There are a handful of day treatment centers geared toward Jews – but no residential rehabs where observant Jews can keep kosher, take time to observe the Sabbath and feel comfortable in traditional garb.